Cloud computing becomes more influential in the charity sector

The charity sector is one of the slowest sectors to implement cloud computing, but the good news is that they are now taking advantage of the benefits of cloud. According to the “Third sector reaches for the cloud” report, almost half of the charity representatives (42%) said their companies had used software as a service (SaaS) based applications over the past 12 months and 39% admitted they hadn’t considered cloud as a solution at all.

Since cloud computing brings a lot of benefits and advantages for charities and NGOs, we might consider the fact that charities are not much different to other organizations in their particular IT challenges. However, some differences exist, especially in regards to the organizational relationships with stakeholders, goals and allocating budgets.

Charities “growing” in the cloud

Often times, cloud providers offer discounts for charities, NGOs or special programs in order to encourage them to migrate to the cloud. Cisco Networking Academy is one of the organizations that offered an alternative in terms of cloud – based applications and services, for free, to NGOs, nonprofits or education institutions, encouraging a great number of charities all around the world to adopt cloud computing.

Long term requirements and budget limitations are issues that cloud computing can help with, when it comes to charities. According to the mentioned report, 35% of respondents said that the cloud was able to make it easier for staff to collaborate and even embrace mobile and remote working conditions to help them be more productive and effective.

Practically, cloud can simply improve the entire “business”, and a great example for this statement is DonorsChoose.org . Like the name says, on this platform people can make online donations to classroom projects they choose. The organization needed resilience and scalability to keep pace with an annual growth rate of 100% and support peaks in demand, so a cloud infrastructure solution was implemented to enable faster and easier website updates. The great benefits of this solution were in terms of improving cost control, increasing IT efficiency and also in processing more donations to projects.

It’s your turn now – Do you know any example of charities that successfully implemented a cloud solution? Or maybe you worked at implementing such a solution? What were the challenges?